This application claims benefit to PCT International Application Number PCT/NL99/00259 filed Apr. 29, 1999, which was published in English under PCT Article 21(2).
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a system for coupling the public telephone network to the Internet using a number of Points-of-Presence, or PoPs, arranged between the public telephone network or Public Switched Telephony Network PSTN, and an Internet Service Provider, or ISP.
2. Description of the Related Art
Access to the Internet is permitted by Internet Service Providers. With the present system of coupling to the Internet, each ISP has a number of arranged PoPs.
Through the public telephone network, indicated as PSTN, an Internet user establishes a connection with a PoP of the desired ISP. Then, from the PoP the traffic is routed to the ISP concerned through a fixed connection.
When the routing is applied as described in the non-prepublished dutch patent application NL-1008259, one PoP per traffic exchange area for each ISP will suffice. Furthermore, then directly at the source it will already be known that it concerns Internet Traffic.
Necessarily, the ISP must provide for a covering network of PoPs and further rent fast connections between them and the central server. This is a relatively expensive matter, particularly for smaller ISPs.
The object of the invention is to remove this difficulty and to that end provides for, that a Public Switched Packet Data Network is arranged between a number of PoPs and a number of ISPs in such a way that a signal received by a PoP can be switched through to more than one ISP.
This means that a number of ISP""s can use one single PoP, in which the signal led to a PoP will comprise an indication of which ISP the PoP is to be connected to.
Thus, the number of PoPs can be considerably reduced. Said PSPDN can be applied for all or a number of ISPs for providing the routing from a number of PoPs to it.